“. . . Sabrina Abbott, the town good girl, daughter of a dentist. Top student at Liberty High. Volunteered at the library every week, reading to little kids. It’s one of the enduring mysteries that surrounds this case—why did the town good girl go with three of the bad seeds to a drug buy in the woods? But let’s get to it. . . .”

THE MURDERS

“Here are the undisputed facts. On the night of July sixth, Sabrina, Eric, Todd, and Diane left the camp somewhere around eleven at night in Todd’s Jeep. They went to the woods to pick up the weekly pot delivery. Eric Wilde was the dealer at camp. Todd and Diane were a couple, and Sabrina Abbott was along for the ride, for whatever reason. The next morning, one of the campers found Eric Wilde, facedown on a dirt path through the woods that led to the theater and archery range. He had been struck on the head and stabbed six times. Five of the wounds were fatal.”

He brought up a black-and-white photo of the scene, taken from a short distance. There was a sheet over the body on the dirt path, and a group of police officers standing around it, conferring with one another.

“The camp quickly figured out that the other three were missing, so the police rode out to try to find them. The Jeep was parked alongside the road. They found the campsite. . . .”

He brought up a picture of the campsite—a smoldering fire, a blanket, a camping lantern, a plastic tray with something all over it, some sodas, a backpack.

“No sign of a struggle,” Carson said. “It looks like they simply left the site. The police searched the area and found an old hunting blind. When they opened it up, well, that was the box in the woods. Pictures of the bodies aren’t available to the public, just a description. Here’s a diagram. . . .”

A creepy drawing of three featureless bodies in a rectangle, with dots and dashes to mark wounds and bindings. Stevie had seen these kinds of drawings before, but they always unnerved her.

“The bodies were arranged in the box neatly. Diane and Sabrina were facing one way, and Todd was turned the other, his head between the girls’ feet. Todd and Diane both had massive head wounds, like Eric. Then they were each stabbed multiple times—Todd had sixteen stab wounds, and Diane had nine. Sabrina was the only one without a head wound. She was stabbed twenty-one times and had defensive marks on her hands, so she was probably facing her killer. The evidence suggested they were killed at the campsite and then moved to the box. The killer bound their legs and wrists in red nylon cord. There was a single word written in white paint on the inside of the box’s lid . . .”

He pulled up the most famous photo from the case, one of the only crime scene photos that had been made available to the public—the word SURPRISE painted in rough, blocky letters. It was so comically ghoulish it seemed like it couldn’t be real.